Targeting children

Children surely play no role at all either in the devising of policy or in other decisions made at the national and provincial levels. Yet they have been made targets in the conflict between terrorists and the state. Very recently in Turbat, five children were injured – four of them critically – when the van taking them to school was attacked through a remote-controlled explosive device. The fact that the school was run by the FC is likely to have been a factor in the strike carried out by well-prepared militants who fired several rounds of shots before fleeing.
The targeting of children surely marks an act of extreme dastardliness. It is hard to even imagine anyone immoral enough to be capable of carrying out such an action. No matter who the perpetrators are they must be hunted down and punished under the law. The attack in Turbat seems to copy those that happened previously in the tribal areas and even in Peshawar. The fact that few arrests were made will have encouraged others to adopt similar methods. It is possible that nationalist militants have picked up ideas from the Taliban and resorted to the same violence the Taliban have used so often to create havoc across in our north. The last thing we need is for this to spread. The level of literacy in Balochistan is already extremely low. In some areas it stands below 20 per cent, compared with the national average of just above 50 per cent. It would be a disaster if more children were to be driven away from schools because their parents are too afraid to send them to there.